Economic Aid to Muslims: Marshall Plan or Jizya?

A provocative column from a European observer named Wolfgang Bruno, who also sends in this introduction:

My name is Wolfgang Bruno. I am European, and I am engaged in writing a book about the movement of ex-Muslims. It is my belief that modern communication technology such as the Internet may become a turning point for the Islamic world comparable to how the introduction of the printing press helped facilitate the Christian Reformation in Europe. The question is: Can Islam be reformed? And what will happen if it can’t?

I will, every few weeks, write some articles about topics related to Islam. The essays I will write will all be offered free of charge to anybody who wants them. However, I will always send each new article to Mr. Robert Spencer, and if he likes it, you will read it first at Jihad Watch.

France, where a growing Muslim minority is in effective control of parts of the country , is launching a Â£8.7 billion programme to tackle disaffection and increasing religious extremism in its Muslim-dominated ghettos. The labour minister, Jean-Louis Borloo aims to create a million jobs and 500,000 new homes in what has been called a “Marshall Plan for towns” . Under the Borloo plan, the youngsters would be enlisted for public service training projects.

It sounds positive to call the initiative a “Marshall Plan”. After all, the Marshall Aid, provided by the USA to support a democratic Europe following the devastations during World War 2, is viewed as one of the most successful such initiatives in modern history. However, it is important to remember that the Marshall Aid was given to help rebuild societies after our ideological enemy had been crushed, not before. If somebody had killed Hitler in the late 1930s, should we then have provided financial assistance to Germany to win the hearts and minds of “more moderate” Nazis? As longs as the Fascist ideology behind Hitler remained alive and received general support, this would have been both futile and dangerous. Our enemies would have viewed it as tribute paid by a weak opponent, and would perhaps have used it to finance weapons aimed to kill us. The situation today is similar to this. As long as Islam remains strong and unreformed, any attempts to “buy off” Muslims will produce little results, only more contempt for our “softness” and lack of spine.

Jizya is a punishment tax that non-Muslim dhimmis according to the Koran 9,29 are supposed to pay for “protection”, “in willing submission”, as a sign of their inferior status to their Islamic rulers. Muslims will thus show little gratitude if non-Muslims give them money. This is Allah’s will and is only to be expected from the infidels. The French or other Europeans who give welfare money and support to Muslims and hope this will somehow buy them goodwill do not understand what they are dealing with. Muslims will think this is a sign that you accept having been defeated and being subjugated to Islam’s might. As a result, they will become more aggressive and demanding, not less. The problem in France’s immigrant ghettos is too much Islam, not too little money. Would sharia-style stonings in the suburbs cease if you raised the unemployment payments? Would the gang rapes in the ghettos? If so, then why isn’t a person like Abu “The Hook” Hamza peaceful? He does live on the dole in the UK.

We are told to find ways to win the hearts and minds of Muslims. Very few care to ask whether or not this feat is possible at all. What if the hearts and minds of Muslims are already occupied by Allah and Muhammad, and the only way to get their approval is by converting to Islam, or submitting to their rule as second – or third class citizens in a religious apartheid system? If that is the case, it means that all the projects aimed at giving financial assistance to Muslims are at best a waste of money, at worst outright counterproductive.

Welfare payments are not the only way transfer of money to Muslims from Western pockets takes place. There were many arguments presented by those who opposed the Iraq war. Most of them were poor. Yes, war is justified if it is for deposing tyrants that constitute a threat to both their own population as well as that of other nations. Saddam Hussein clearly fits that description. However, as reports keep ticking in about Iraqi women being harassed and subject to sharia laws and Christian churches being burnt , we need to ask ourselves a difficult question: Are we supporting the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq, paid for by Western blood and money? And maybe in Afghanistan, too? As Mr. Robert Spencer writes, this illustrates one of the downsides of this War on Terror. This isn’t a war on “Terror”, and it is confusing and pointless to label it as such. Terrorism is just a method. Our adversary is an ideology, and that ideology is called Islam. Perhaps we should, as Hugh Fitzgerald has suggested, name it a “War on Radical Islamism”, “War on Political Islam” or a “War against Jihad”, to avoid the issue of identifying the very religion of Islam as the problem. However, we should always keep the real enemy closely identified in our minds.

Western civilization is now engaged in a battle for its very survival. Not only do our leaders refuse to name the enemy, as large parts of our populations are unaware of the fact that there is a struggle going on at all. We are still busy paying our enemies to destroy us, through buying billions of dollars of their oil, providing aid to their countries or giving them welfare money they use to build more mosques and support Jihadist activities in our lands. This has to change, or we will lose. This struggle could last for decades, if not generations. Our enemies want to bleed us dry, both literally and economically.

While Yassir Arafat’s wife has received hundreds of millions of dollars from Europeans taxpayers to buy Gucci purses, and billions and billions of dollars are spent on supporting Iraqis who clearly have their own Islamic agendas, the people who are risking their lives every day in challenging this ideology are penniless and more or less ignored. It is no exaggeration to say that Muslims fear ex-Muslims like Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Anwar Shaikh, and Azam Kamguian at least as much as, if not more than our nuclear arsenals. Islamist don’t fear war or death. On the contrary, they relish it and the opportunities it provides for martyrdom and safe passage to Paradise. Islam is a warrior creed, a very good one. As an intellectual construct, on the other hand, Islam is brittle, and will collapse if sufficiently challenged. That is why Islamists are so desperate to kill critics like Theo van Gogh. And that is why this is precisely an area were we should put much more resources at work. Ibn Warraq’s books and others made by former Muslims should be translated by professionals into every major language known to man, made freely available on the Internet and broadcasted on radio to Muslims everywhere. With due and generous compensation paid to the authors, of course. Their websites should receive funding for the upgrades needed to reach a mainstream audience, as should the best websites by non-Muslims such as Jihad Watch. All of this will cost only a tiny fraction of the money now wasted on misguided schemes for “dialogue” with Muslims, and will yield far greater results. In the era of the suicide bomber, we cannot afford not to do it. If not, our children and grandchildren could be paying a much heavier price tomorrow.

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